


gymnast

by SilentProtagonist000



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Friends to Lovers, I'm doing my best, M/M, Sexual Tension, Written in one sitting, idk what to call this, listen, my legs hurt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 02:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilentProtagonist000/pseuds/SilentProtagonist000
Summary: Touching is intimate.Yosuke knew that.Somehow, though, Yosuke wouldn't let himself remember that when it came to Yu Narukami.





	gymnast

**Author's Note:**

> [Support me on ko-fi!](https://ko-fi.com/silentprotagonist000) I take commissions; feel free to shoot me a message!
> 
> I wrote this in one sitting after 3 drinks
> 
> Listen, the game was made 2008, MP3 players were still a thing

Touching is intimate.

Yosuke figured that fact out young, anyhow. His father only ever touched his mother—soft, fluttering, butterfly fingertips to the nape of her neck, gently and in passing. Yosuke’s father never hugged him. He never hugged Yosuke’s grandparents when they came to visit. He didn’t even hug Yosuke’s uncles. Yosuke’s father only ever touched his mother—and they were specters of touches, barely even a backwards glance as he walked by his wife in the kitchen and the living room. As a result, Yosuke never really yearned for his father’s physical affection. It wasn’t for him, he rationalized. And his mother gave him plenty of cuddling and attention, so Yosuke was never really starved for touch. Touch, he learned from an early age, was reserved for women to give and receive.

So being sixteen and being embraced tenderly around his waist by his _very male_ best friend was a shock. Sure, he was sobbing and maybe if there was ever a time to hold him, it would be now—but he didn’t expect Yu Narukami, of all people, to hold him like he was fragile. It felt weird enough to express his grief outwardly to another man, but to be comforted?

“Dude, stop, that’s for girls,” he managed to choke out. Nevertheless, Yu didn’t stop hugging him. Instead, Yosuke felt the afterthought of a smile against his carotid artery and his fear melted. For the pulse of a moment, Yosuke didn’t think hugging was for girls.

Only for a moment, though. Yosuke got a grip on himself on a way home. At least, he did long enough to feel the lingering absence of Yu’s head on his shoulder as he tucked himself into his futon.

That night was the first night in a long time that he hadn’t dreamt of Saki-senpai.

* * *

The first time Yosuke wondered if something was changing was during home economics class two days later. He was paired with Yukiko—a horrible decision on Kashiwagi’s part, really—and ordered to halve the recipe of sugar cookies. Of course, Yukiko _just so happened_ to be in charge of the dry ingredients and she _just so happened_ to “accidentally” double the flour. Of course, the oven was overwhelmed and of course, black smoke started belching from the belly as if stoked by the internal flames of Yukiko and Yosuke’s combined stupidity.

Kashiwagi had pulled the fire alarm, but it was (of course, _of course_) Yu that had acted first. He’d clasped a hand on Yosuke’s shoulder and pulled him back from the smoldering oven. “Stay back,” he warned into the shell of Yosuke’s left ear, and if it weren’t for Chie brandishing the fire extinguisher, he would’ve burnt up on the spot.

His and Yukiko’s sugar cookies were blackened lumps when it was all said and done, but Yosuke had not cooled.

* * *

The second time, Yosuke was trying to re-establish a baseline that was very clearly a lost cause. Their English teacher was talking about homophones or _something_ and anyway, Yosuke had completely lost interest in the lecture and he decided to kick Yu in the back like he did sometimes when he was bored. The way it usually went—or, as it had gone for the last several months—was that Yosuke would jab Yu in the lower back and Yu wouldn’t flinch, but then proceed to bitch about his aching back during lunchtime. Yosuke expected this time to be the same as the first hundred.

But instead, as soon as the balls of his toes made contact with the sliver of Yu’s back between the chair and the seat of his desk, he was suddenly aware of the searing flesh—hot and warm and effervescent, despite several layers of leather and clothing—beneath his feet, and his shoe stilled. Instead of following through with the jab, Yosuke let his foot rest there against Yu’s back, soft yet unrelenting. He was touching _Yu_ and _oh god what the fuck, why does this not—_

Yu turned around slightly, a deep scowl drawn on his face. “_Stop_,” he mouthed. Yu had never responded to Yosuke’s mid-class ministrations before. Yosuke felt altogether resolved yet dirty to be on the receiving end of such a scornful look.

Even though Yu turned back around and faced their teacher again, Yosuke didn’t move his foot. He didn’t feel motivated enough to.

He felt Yu lean back into his shoe fifteen minutes before lunch.

* * *

Everything else afterwards felt like a compendium.

During lunchtime, Yosuke found himself knocking into Yu’s shoulder more often than usual during a poorly-timed joke on Kanji’s behalf. He found himself poking Yu’s toes with his under the kokatsu when they were doing homework together in Yu’s living room. He found himself knocking Yu in the stomach during _Street Fighter_ tournaments at his house on Saturday nights, indulging in the aggravated litany of curses streaming from Yu’s mouth when he jabbed him especially hard. It’s all guy stuff, he told himself. All consensual, goofy touches between men who cared about each other as friends. Really, it’s all it was.

The night Yosuke first touched himself thinking of Yu, it started the same way in his mind as well—socking Yu in the gut, laughing at his M. Bison playset, absolutely wrecking him in the second match. But then, some intrusive, repressed neuron in Yosuke’s skull reminded him of how overheated he felt when Yu pulled him back from the burning oven in home ec. Or the time when Yu outright noticed him in class and showed how much he craved Yosuke’s touch.

As soon as Yosuke pulled down his pants and laid his hands on his cock, he knew he was done for. There was no going back from here. But it just felt so _good_ and _God I wish Yu were here and_—

The next morning, he woke up ruined and flushed and the roof his boxers bleached white. He was late to school, so he didn’t bother changing underwear.

He made eye contact with a smiling Yu at the school gate and realized what a mistake he made.

* * *

Twice after that, Yosuke fucked up.

The first was after lunch, surrounded by the other members of the Investigation Team, chatting about what leads to follow next, when Yosuke noticed Yu was subtly tapping his left foot. It took even a second longer to realize Yu was keeping in time with the music Yosuke had playing from his headphones at the moment.

“Hey, I like that,” Yu said to him as Chie and Kanji argued whether or not a specific Shadow they’d seen was representative of Minato’s furtive immaturity. “What band?”

Yosuke barely noticed that Yu was talking to him until he noticed those simmering grey eyes trained on him. “Oh,” he said, scarce and almost taken aback. “It’s, uh, this Russian band. Called Little Big.”

“I like their vibe,” Yu said. “Can I listen?” He crooked his index finger at the orange headphones around Yosuke’s neck and Yosuke reacted almost embarrassingly fast. His hands closed over the earmuffs and pulled them over Yu’s ears, making every effort to avoid his best friend’s soft-looking earlobes as the orange fabric engulfed them.

Yu closed his eyes and broke out in a grin almost immediately. “Nice,” he said, almost imperceptible—inaudible enough that Chie, Kanji, and Yukiko hadn’t noticed and were still wrapped up in their own conversation. The three of them faded from Yosuke’s periphery as he watched Yu bob his head to the beat, his tapping foot quickening as the bass dropped, the right corner of his mouth twitching upward as the lead singers dropped a particularly raunchy line. Yosuke felt hypnotized as he watched his leader get lost in the music.

Lost enough that Yosuke didn’t notice that his own fingers had closed around the chord connected the headphones to his MP3 player. Yosuke trailed his gaze down the headset port to the aux chord wrapped around his partner’s neck, loosely dangled around his collarbone, before snaking down into Yosuke’s uniform pocket. Hardly in control of his own motions, Yosuke grabbed the chord and tugged—hard.

The cable seized lightly around the base of Yu’s neck and Yu inhaled sharply—and suddenly, Yosuke felt horribly guilty, guilty about being so absorbed in the gradually reddening spot on Yu’s skin where the chord was digging into him, and he nearly let go. He did, almost, until he saw Yu’s eyelids fly open and lock eyes with him. His pupils swallowed his ash grey irises, dilated and seemingly far too interested in what he had impulsively done.

Yu saw his grip slacken. “Don’t quit,” he rasped. Yosuke stopped, his muscles tense.

“Hey, Yu, what do you think about this dude we saw in the last dungeon?” Chie, ever oblivious, intervened and caught Yu’s attention. Quietly, Yosuke watched Yu unwrap the chord from around his neck and remove the headphones from his ears. The breath, he realized, was still absent from his lungs.

The second time was two weeks later, just long enough for Yosuke to convince himself that the lunch period event hadn’t occurred and was just a figment of his overactive imagination. Yu was due for classroom cleaning duty and was not sus enough to complete it himself, so he’d enlisted in Yosuke’s help. Yosuke, having nothing else to do (and reassuring himself, after significant self-coaching in the bathroom mirror on the second floor, that it had _nothing to do with the fact that Yu hadn’t asked him to stop fucking choking him with his headphone chord_\--), agreed to help. It was a Saturday, and Yu apparently spent his Saturdays at band practice playing his trumpet, so it was unusual that he had volunteered for cleaning duty on this particular day.

So it shouldn’t have surprised Yosuke much to see Ayane Matsunga, Yu’s kouhai in band, approaching him as Yu was behind the cusp of 2-2’s doors clapping chalkboard erasers. “Hanamura-senpai,” she said shyly, her steps shuffling slightly and her arms clasped behind her back, her gaze downcast and blushing. “I wanted to talk to Narukami-senpai, is he here?” Yosuke caught a glimpse of an envelope gripped in her tiny hands behind her back. Yu was a lucky dog.

Yosuke didn’t feel jealous. Absolutely not. “He’s cleaning right now, can I pass a message along?”

Ayane’s blush deepened. “It’s nothing big,” she stammered. “I-I just have something to ask him. Can you deliver this to him?” She thrust the envelope at Yosuke. Yosuke briefly considered not accepting it—his hands were full of a mop handle in the hallway in front of 2-2, after all.

"Sure,” he said anyway, taking the note. The front read “_Yu-Senpai <3_” in a light, flowery script. Yosuke should have been stoked that his best friend was getting a note like this from a girl. Instead.

He hated Ayane’s handwriting. He felt sick.

“I’ll pass it along,” he promised.

Ayane beamed at him. If Yosuke were a stronger man, he’d feel flattered. “Thanks, Hanamura-senpai!” she gushed. Yosuke watched her skip excitedly down the stairs to the first floor hallway and all the while, some traitorous part of Yosuke considered tearing up and throwing away the note. Why, exactly, did he feel that way? Yu was a great guy, _of course_ he was attracting beautiful women interested in his company. Chie had expressed interest in the past, then Yukiko Amagi _of all people_, and now Ayane. Yu had women crawling all over him, he could have his literal pick of the litter.

Yet somehow, Yosuke hated the thought of that.

_Don’t stop_, Yu had said to him, chord wrapped around his neck—_stop_, he’s said, sole of a sneaker pressed against the small of his back—

“Who was that?” Yu had materialized at the threshold of 2-2’s south exit into Yasogami High’s second floor hallway, lightly dusty from the chalk residue in the erasers he’d been clapping in the window overlooking the quad. Yu had left the classroom door open behind him and Yosuke saw the dusky orange of the early evening light filtering in from behind, Yu’s body seemingly haloed by a radiant glow. Despite the extraneous light, Yosuke first and foremost noticed Yu’s grey eyes fixated upon him.

Smirking, Yosuke glanced down at the cute envelope Ayane had left for him. “Sorry, man, special delivery for you,” he said. “From your band kouhai. You want it?”

Yu haad frowned, appearing displeased. Yosuke’s heart leapt with joy before he could stop it. “That so?” he asked. “Give it here, then.” He extended his arm toward Yosuke, beckoning for the envelope.

Yosuke dropped the mop. He wasn’t sure what it was—Jiraiya, his unconscious brain, _himself_—but he moved before he could still himself.

He slipped the envelope into the back pocket of Yu’s uniform pants. The denim felt rough against his palms, searing and shaking, fearfully leaving the missive in Yu’s pocket as if it were the state nuclear code. He didn’t meet Yu’s eyes, but he knew Yu was staring at him with perceptibly powerful shock.

_God, swinging a sword does wonders for his—_

“Have a good night, Partner,” Yosuke said, sliding his hand out from the inside of Yu’s pocket. He propped the mop up against 2-2’s doorframe, shouldered his backpack from the edge of the hallway by the staircase, and hurried down to the first floor before Yu could catch up to him.

The next morning, Yosuke woke up with damp boxers.

He didn’t change them before he went to school.

* * *

"Saki-senpai’s brother wanted to talk to you,” Yu said one afternoon a week and a half later, as if Yosuke had never touched his ass. Yosuke was mopping the hallway outside of classroom 2-2 because it was his own turn for class tidying duty.

“That so?” he echoed. He saw the _left_ corner of Yu’s mouth twitch downward at that. “Did he say why?”

“Not really,” Yu shrugged. Chie and Yukiko weren’t with hi, _where were they?_ They were _always with Yu, even when he was talking to Yosuke_—“He just wanted me to give you his phone number. Said he’d like to talk to you at some point. About Saki. I said I’d pass it along.”

Yosuke exhaled loudly out of his nose. “Sure, yeah,” he replied, not feeling it.

Yu noticed. He quirked his eyebrows upwards and, before Yosuke could react, he felt a hand sliding into his back pocket. Yu leaned in and Yosuke felt absolutely molten. “Let me know if you need me,” Yu murmured, his breath leaving steam on the papillae on Yosuke’s ear.

As Yu meandered down the hallway, out of Yosuke’s quivering sight and just out of range of how far Yosuke felt he could chuck the mop handle, Yosuke felt angry over the fact that he did need Yu.

He talked to Saki-senpai’s brother.

But he still needed Yu.

* * *

“I need you,” he said to Yu after he talked to Saki-senpai’s brother days later, after Saki-senpai’s brother had vented to him in the food court of Junes about how much he hated him and how culpable he felt Yosuke was for Saki-senpai’s death and how utterly broken they both felt afterwards. He and Yu were studying for the upcoming winter finals and Yu seemed surprised by this shockingly average revelation.

“Do you?” he asked Yosuke, eyes wide with surprise that Yosuke was annoyed seemed genuine.

Yosuke tossed his branded Junes pen that he was using for his math homework because his mechanical pencil had run out of lead. “Of course, asshole,” he snapped. “_Of course_ I need you. You’re, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“That isn’t true,” Yu protested.

“It is,” Yosuke insisted. “You’re magical. You bring so many people with no goddamned connection together, you make us all feel connected, you make all of us feel like losers for loving you—” And a pair of soft, unchapped lips were upon his. Yosuke _moaned_. He felt so fucking special and—

“Yu, get off me.” He shoved Yu off, despite how inviting he felt and how boiling hot he was. “Stop kissing me.”

Yu smirked and it was the best thing Yosuke saw all day—grey eyes, framed with grey locks, locked onto the greyrocked stare of someone far deeper into denial. “You sure about that?” he asked. Yosuke wasn’t sure.

“Yes,” he lied.

“I don’t think you are.” Yu was too perceptive. “You’re jealous of Ayane.”

“How can I be jealous of someone I know you like?” Yosuke demanded. He saw how Ayane blushed, some ugly part of him had seen girls like that before and he knew that they acted that way when they knew guys liked them back. _Of course._

“I don’t like Ayane,” Yu said. “Yosuke, I like _you_. Nobody—Ayane didn’t choke—”

Yosuke felt a hundred Celsius warmer. “My headphones—”

“I don’t care,” Yu blurted. “Yosuke, choke me.”

“You don’t mean—”

“I do, Yosuke,” Yu whispered, hand on his shoulder, eyes locked on his, pupils dilated and Yosuke felt both simultaneously relived from the flames of the unspoken oven and tempered by them at the same time. “I do. Choke me.”

Yosuke didn’t grab his throat that time.

* * *

A week later, Ayane Matsuga came by 2-2 at lunchtime with a pink blush and ginger pork in her bento.

“I’d love to share some,” Yu said smilimgly to her, to Yosuke’s chagrin. “Is it okay if Yosuke has some too?” Yu asked, to Yosuke’s delight.

Ayane’s expressed darkened when she saw Yosuke’s fingers close around Yu’s wrist.

* * *

This week, Kashiwagi was lecturing about Shogun Japan. Yosuke was bored. He pressed the ball of his right foot against Yu’s back in front of him.

Yu turned imperceptibly and smiled at him. This time, he didn’t request for Yosuke to stop.

* * *

Even now, Yu still played a shitty M. Bison.

**Author's Note:**

> ahhhhh ahah my LEGS


End file.
